The Incredible True Story of Blondy Baruti Read online

  Then she would repeat the entire process all over again.

  These were not brief trips. My mother would be gone for many weeks, or even months at a time. Every time she left, I would cry hysterically, for I knew there was the possibility that she would never return. Although civil war had ended, the Congo remained a deadly place, and the further one strayed from Kinshasa and the western part of the country, the more likely it was that violence would be encountered. You could easily argue that these excursions represented a callous or foolish disregard for safety on the part of my mother, but that would be missing the point. She was a survivor . . . a fighter. Nothing was going to prevent her from trying to provide for her family, not even the prospect of being killed or raped.

  And so it was that my mother would trudge off into the wilderness, traveling on foot or by boat or bus, or some combination of the three. Often, she would arrive at her destination and discover that there were hundreds or even thousands of people in line ahead of her, waiting for a chance to buy and sell their goods. She would sleep outside on the ground for days and weeks on end before boarding a boat for her next destination. We never knew when she was coming home, as there was no way to communicate with her while she was away, and so each time a boat arrived in Kinshasa, we wondered if she might be aboard. More than once we stood at the dock, waiting and watching, only to hear horrifying tales of boats that had been attacked by guerrillas or flooded en route, killing everyone on board.

  “Is Mama okay?” I would ask my grandmother.

  “Yes, Blondy . . . God is watching over her.”

  Apparently so, for my mother survived every one of these adventures, which allowed me to continue in school, albeit with periodic interruptions for nonpayment of tuition. Such disruptions were not unusual; indeed, many of the children in my neighborhood also missed a lot of school, and in fact I was one of the few to complete my degree. I do not take credit for this; had it not been for my mother’s industriousness, and her steadfast determination to take care of her children, in spite of enormous obstacles, I surely would have been just another casualty of the rampant poverty and violence of the Congo. Additionally, I was fortunate to have an extended family that not only cared for me, but demanded of me more than I expected of myself. My grandmother and my uncle Joseph insisted I go to school and do my homework so that I would not become like the rest of the neighborhood boys—uneducated, impoverished young men fathering multiple children when they lacked both the maturity and the resources to care for them. It was a brutal and seemingly endless cycle of poverty and heartbreak.

  “Where are you going?” my grandmother or my uncle Joseph would say as I tried to sneak out the door in the evening. “It is time for homework.” They would stand over me for hours on end, until I had finished every lesson precisely in the manner that it had been assigned. No shortcuts. No laziness. Uncle Joseph would beat me with his belt if I didn’t remember what was taught at school that day, so you can imagine there was a lot of pressure to learn and remember everything to avoid that prospect. If one of my teachers sent home a negative assessment, or indicated that I wasn’t paying attention in class, my uncle would also furnish a punishment, making me kneel under the sun, hands held high until my shoulders went numb, and I would cry like a baby. Sometimes my grandmother, concerned that my uncle was too harsh, would try to intervene. My uncle would yell at her: “Stay away. I know what I am doing! He has to learn.” I should stress that while this might sound brutal, it was normal for African boys. In most cases it was the father who administered punishment and made sure that schoolwork was completed. In our house, Uncle Joseph assumed that role. At the time, I resented both their oversight and the tedium of schoolwork. In retrospect, however, I am grateful.

  Nearly a year passed before I became comfortable with school and began to make friends. One of the things that eased my discomfort was an introduction to the arts, specifically theater. I’m not quite sure what it was that attracted me to the stage. Perhaps it was all the time I had spent in my own head, while out in the jungle, fantasizing about a different and better life. Theater was an escape, a chance to be part of a new and exciting world, a world far different from the one in which I seemed to be trapped. And I liked the other kids, as well. They were playful, smart, sensitive. I felt at home in their company.

  I suppose it helped that my first real crush was also involved in the school drama program; her name was Peggy Nkunku, and she was pretty and talented. Part of my motivation for joining the program was a desperate attempt to spend more time with her. And it worked! I tried out for one of the lead roles in a production called “Commandment Jesus.” I went after this part because it would allow me to play Peggy’s husband onstage. I was not quite thirteen years and hopelessly infatuated with my costar. I guess this made my performance better. It sure made the experience more fun.

  But at some point, my love for theater became more than just an excuse to be near Peggy, and I’d say that moment came the first time I was onstage in front of a real audience. To see the faces in the crowd, and to hear people applauding and laughing. It made my heart swell! I knew I was home.

  Theater quickly became my passion. I was far more interested in the school play than I was in the mundanity of academic work. But there was an understanding from the beginning, made clear by my entire family: if my grades slipped, I would not be allowed to participate in the theater program. It was all well and good that I enjoyed “playing,” as my grandmother called it, but school came first; school was what really mattered. I made sure that my work was done, and done properly, in order to ensure that I would always eligible for drama productions.

  Our theater program was quite good. We even took second place in a national middle school theater competition, and I was named “most improved actor.” The acting bug bit me hard and fast. Everyone thought it was the strangest thing. What had become of the boy who didn’t want to leave the house? The boy who had been virtually mute when he first came to Kinshasa?

  What had become of Shaka?

  I don’t know how to explain it, except to say that when I was standing on the stage, my fears and trepidation melted away. I could be anyone, and in the pretending, there was comfort and safety. There was a world far from the Congo—a world in which people were not mutilated or killed; a world in which children were safe—and I could be part of it. At least for a little while.

  To make sure that I could continue to be part of it, I not only kept pace with my studies, but I also did what I could to contribute to the family budget. I no longer feared going to school; I feared the prospect of having school taken away. Losing school meant losing the theater program; it meant losing my friends; it might as well have meant losing my life. When my mother or my grandmother would tell me that money was scarce and that my tuition was late, I would begin to hyperventilate.

  “What can I do?” I would ask.

  “Work” was the customary answer.

  There weren’t many avenues for a middle school boy to earn money, but I did what I could. I would fill plastic bags with water and carry them in a basket on my head to the local market, where I stood outside for hours in 110-degree heat, selling the bags to thirsty shoppers for the equivalent of a few pennies. On a good day I might clear two dollars. Often, I would trade some of my school supplies for peanuts or other snacks from a local vendor, just to squelch the rumbling in my stomach. Everyone sacrificed so that I could go to a good school. I had an obligation to help in any way possible, and I took it seriously.

  One of the hardest things about living in Kinshasa was knowing that my father lived only ten miles away, and yet had nothing to do with his children. He never stopped by on birthdays or holidays, never sent presents or cards. Christmas was particularly painful. Instead of having fun, I was sad, and not just because a lack of money meant we had few gifts. My mother would sell her own clothing so that she could buy food and make a big meal on Christmas, which is depressing, of course. But it was all the worse knowing tha
t my father was so close and could have made things better for us, but apparently did not care enough to help.

  I would sit there on Christmas Day, looking enviously at some of my friends hanging out with their fathers; even though they didn’t have much in the way of material possessions or gifts, they had love to share with one another. Their fathers were there for them, and mine wasn’t. He was with his other children, and with another wife. I was hurt more than you can imagine. I was also angry at my father. I repeatedly asked myself these questions: Why does he not care about me? Am I lacking in comparison to his other kids? What have I done so wrong for him not even to stop by and wish me and my sister a simple “Merry Christmas” during one of the most important days in the life of an African child?

  There was one time, when I was in middle school, when we were having particularly challenging economic struggles that my mom contacted my father. I couldn’t attend school because we didn’t have money for tuition, and my mother must have been desperate to reach out to my father, because she was a proud woman and I imagined it pained her to have to do so.

  My mother and I took a bus to my father’s office; she hoped to convince him to help with tuition so that I could resume my education. I was excited merely at the prospect of seeing him, regardless of the outcome. I remember sitting outside his office for hours, waiting for him to meet with us. Finally, he appeared. He did not even look me in the eye. Instead, he stared down my mother and angrily said to her, “This kid has nothing to do with me. I didn’t plan to have him. It was a mistake.” Then he walked straight back into his office, closing the door behind him. I was stunned by both his actions and his words, which felt like someone putting a knife straight through my heart.

  That was the last time I ever saw him. Last I heard, he was still alive and struggling in the Congo. I hope I will get to see him again, so that I can say to him, “Father, I love and forgive you, no matter what you have done to me.”

  And yet, there is a difference between forgiving and forgetting. I was born with my father’s name—Blondy Nseka—but changed it to Blondy Baruti out of respect for the person who raised me and cared for me, and who did everything in her power to keep me alive. My father played no role in any of this; I see no reason to honor him by bearing his name.

  KINSHASA WAS A HARD place for a boy to grow up in, and many of my friends wound up in jail or dead. They used drugs and alcohol, and turned to stealing to support their habits. I could easily have gone this way, as well, if not for the love and intense oversight of my mother and grandmother. Despite frequent and extended absences, my mother’s influence was always felt. I adored her and I wanted her to be proud of me. Likewise, I wanted the respect of my uncles, my mother’s brothers, as well. My uncle Joseph, as I said, was a tough but supportive influence, while on the other hand my uncle Desire was often mean and spiteful. He would call me a “son of a bitch” in front of my mother, just to make us feel bad.

  “You’re nothing,” he would say to my mother. “Your kids are nothing. Their father abandoned all of you, and these kids don’t even deserve to be in our family.”

  While my older sister would often argue with him, I rarely said anything. Since I had no father, my uncles represented traditional male authority in my eyes. These men were my mother’s brothers. Fighting with either of them would have been disrespectful to my mother, so I bit my tongue, no matter how hurtful the insult. Like when he would tell me, “You’re never going to amount to anything in life.”

  For him it was a disgrace that I had changed my last name to Baruti. He felt that I didn’t deserve to carry the proud family name because Baruti was a man of dignity and respect, a powerful man. I wasn’t a child from love or marriage. I was a bastard in his eyes and worthy of nothing but contempt. This man would make me run errands for him, and I don’t mean simply taking out the trash. He would give me a twenty-dollar bill and tell me to deliver it to one of his girlfriends, a trip that might stretch to ten miles in each direction. And I did it, because I didn’t want to incur his wrath, or risk harm to my mother or grandmother or sister. This was the way it worked in Africa—the male held a position of power over all females in his family, and while it mystified me, I felt helpless to do anything about it.

  I believe this is the reason why my sister went on to make some bad decisions in her life: she had four children with four different boys, and they all ran away from her. In the Congo, a girl is not supposed to have kids before marriage and my mother and my grandmother had to take care of the kids, which reflected poorly on our entire family. People would point fingers at me and say, “That’s her little brother, Blondy.” And I would respond by shaking my head and denying any association. This accomplished nothing, for I felt not only shame about my sister’s behavior, but about my refusal to acknowledge my own family as well.

  “No, she’s not my sister. You have me mistaken.”

  But there was no mistake. One cannot hide from one’s family, any more than one can hide from the past. We are shaped by both, for better or worse.

  CHAPTER 5

  * * *

  I was introduced to basketball at the age of fourteen. Soccer is the game of choice for most children in the Congo, as it is in most of the world, but I had grown taller than my friends and thus found myself being nudged toward a game more befitting my changing physical stature. Soccer players are smaller and quicker; by age fourteen, I was approximately 6-foot-2 and thin as a reed, a bit clumsy but determined to get better. I was taller than many of my professors at school, prompting the other kids to give me a new nickname: “Giant.”

  “Forget about soccer,” some of them said to me. “Forget about acting. You should be playing basketball.”

  At that point in time the Congo had produced just one world-famous basketball player, the great Dikembe Mutombo, who had been a star first at Georgetown University and then in the NBA. Mutombo was more than seven feet tall, with the wingspan of a 747 jet and an uncanny ability to rebound and block shots. He also had an ever-present smile and a huge personality that made him a fan favorite. Mutombo was a hero in the Congo, especially to children. He was an example of what you could accomplish with hard work and discipline, and with a little bit of luck. He was also a window into the glamorous life of America, the life we all dreamed about and saw on television, movies, and the Internet. A land where everyone lived in a mansion and had enough food and clothing to sustain a small village; where people drove pristine cars on perfectly maintained highways; where they smiled and laughed and were happy all the time.

  A fantasy? Of course. But to a boy growing up in the Congo, playing basketball in sandals or even in his bare feet, with a persistent rumbling in his stomach and an unshakable memory of violence and hatred in his head, the America depicted in popular culture was a fantasy worth pursuing. As much as I loved acting and playing soccer, maybe my friends were right. If I had a chance of escaping the Congo and getting to America, basketball would be the ticket.

  And I knew it right away, the very first time I picked up a ball. I had enjoyed playing soccer and other games, but there was something about basketball that instantly captured my heart. It felt natural to me. It was a game that valued athleticism and size. It was a game that could be played in solitude, just a boy and a ball and a hoop, and I took to it like a bird to air. I would spend endless hours dribbling and shooting and pretending that I was Mutombo or Michael Jordan, or some other great American superstar. I felt at home on the basketball court, and I also believed that the game could take me far from home—all the way to America—so I threw myself into it with a passion I had never known.

  Initially, I had trouble getting into games because I didn’t know any of the guys playing basketball on the local court—and by “court” I mean an uneven cracked surface (a mix of asphalt and concrete, often covered with loose sand)—known as Foyer Social, some four miles from my grandmother’s house, in the neighborhood of Bandal. So I would sit there and wait until they were done playing, and t
hen I would practice by myself, sometimes for two or three hours, until the sun dipped behind the skyline and I could no longer see the rim. I had no basketball shoes, so most of the time I would play in my school shoes or sandals, but these were uncomfortable, so sometimes I’d just go barefoot, until the ground burned through my skin and blisters erupted on my soles.

  “I’ve got to get better,” I’d say to myself. “I want to be part of these games.”

  I was allowed into pickup games only when there weren’t enough players and a body was needed to fill out a team. Consumed by nervousness and clueless as to how the sport was actually played, I repeatedly embarrassed myself. I would dribble the ball off my foot or miss a shot so badly that it wouldn’t even hit the backboard. Meanwhile, I noticed that many of the other players were capable of slam-dunking the ball. They would leap high into the air and throw down thunderous stuffs that would provoke howls of approval from their teammates and spectators. I was tall enough that I should have been able to dunk, as well. But I was clumsy and awkward; I would lose control of the ball on the way up or get it smashed back down onto my head by an older, more seasoned opponent. He would laugh and wag a finger at me—Dikembe Mutombo’s signature move—as if to say, “Get that shit out of here!”